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You have to wonder about Elon Musk's "first principle" thinking if he lashes out in such basic ways that defy basic engineering intuition. Twitter's source cod

You have to wonder about Elon Musk's "first principle" thinking if he lashes out in such basic ways that defy basic engineering intuition. Twitter's source code is valuable to Twitter, much like Twitter's engineers and their institutional knowhow were valuable to Twitter (before Musk fired them by the thousands). But outside Twitter, taking their code and assets and trying to awkwardly graft them onto Meta/Instagram's stacks would not only not help, but actually slow them down and cause the product's functionality and stability to suffer. Twitter's layoffs represent pure loss to Twitter, and much less gain to anyone else. Trying to spin it as if the nature of Twitter's operation is some big valuable secret is such cringe coming from leadership that supposedly prides itself on being technical and hands-on.

danpalmer 3y ago
Musk doesn't value people – this is apparent from all of his businesses, he doesn't care about work life balance, inclusive hiring, etc. From this, it does follow that if you've got some secret-sauce at your company, and it's NOT your employees and their experience, then it must be something else. If you're Twitter, then it's probably The Algorithm, or code printed out onto reams of paper. After all, that's what makes the money right? Except as is obvious to most companies, it's not. The people, the shared understanding, the experience, the company culture, and even the context of the world that the product is a part of – these are all far more important than the actual code, and where any long-term successful company focuses their efforts. To put it in terms Musk might understand, product and engineering teams are "stage 0" for a software company, they are the machine that builds the machine.